While there are problems with employee motivation and performance improvement, it is not always the employee. A lot has to do with how they are being led and managed and supported and trained. The words include innovation, involvement and engagement… And you can click on any of the icons below to go to Part One of the slideshare package I just uploaded on Teaching The Caterpillar to Fly, some haiku on managing and leading change.

It raises a number of key questions, like these:

This raises the question about what we might choose to try to do differently to involve the work team into sharing their ideas. Obviously, telling them to work harder will not generate much involvement and yelling will only generate compliance, not motivation for productivity.

and also:

In reality, the ideas for performance improvement already exist. Trust is one issue — can the management team be trusted to not claim ownership of the ideas of the individuals so that recognition can be fairly shared? Can the boss actually stop long enough to listen to ideas? Will there be sufficient time and resources to implement suggested changes?

The round wheel ideas are already implemented into the behaviors of many of the exemplary performers. They simply do things differently.

A client years ago had one exceptional salesperson and a lot of good ones. A stupidly simple conversation discovered that “a secret to his success” was that he spent his own money taking his clients to lunch. There was not company budget for that and most salespeople simply ate cheaply on their own — he chose to do things differently. Adding a budget and essentially requiring all the salespeople to spend their monthly lunch budgets on at least some client lunches improved sales and perceived service incredibly! A return on that investment of 500%!

There are zillions of similar examples out there in the minds of top performers everywhere. They do things differently. Share the ideas! Implement better solutions. Involve and engage everyone in the performance improvement initiative. Just do it!

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.